How are you hanging in there? It has certainly been a strange few months, has it not? I always recommend keeping a gratitude journal because sometimes, life can seem pretty bleak, but if you try, you can almost always find something to be thankful for and that exercise can totally turn around your heart, mind and outlook.

Please know that just because I am not going to extensively discuss the racial hurts and struggles and devastation going on in our country in this space does not mean that I don’t care. It just means that I am choosing to keep this space a place that encourages you in your walk to eat well to beat disease since that is what I do best. We have had so many hard conversations in my house this week, we are praying fervently for healing and wisdom in how to move forward, but I’ve been seeking a respite from these hard topics and all of the typically light content I find online has just been more heaviness. Please hear my heart: I care and I am turning to the one source I know for wisdom and guidance and that is the Lord God. So please don’t take my lack of discussion of these topics here as complacence or lack of concern. I care deeply.

Amongst all the hard news, there has been some encouraging economic news this week with over 2.5 million jobs created and I say, we’ll take any encouraging news we can get! It’s a very small step, but it’s still a positive sign.

This week, I’m back again to share my family’s meal plan. I’ll tell you what I’m planning to make and suggest ideas for substitutions in case you don’t have everything you need to make the meal I have listed. I’m doing this because finding meal inspiration can be hard. You know what you’re going to get from me is at the very least, gluten free, and most likely paleo or even autoimmune paleo. I have had a terrible time coming up with meal ideas the past couple weeks and I basically do this for a living, so I know if I’m having trouble, you likely are too. We aren’t eating out at all and so cooking every single day can wear on a person! I hope seeing what we’re eating is helpful to you in some small way.

We all have so many stressors right now that keeping your diet as anti-inflammatory as possible is so important. With economic stress, racial tensions, city-wide curfews, fear of contracting a deadly virus, keeping  your body as healthy as possible, is about the best thing you can do!

Ok, let’s get to it, shall we?

If you missed last week’s meal plan, you can catch up here.

That post will show you what we had planned for the week and then below you can see how our plans changed, how I made substitutions, etc.

Monday: The plan was fish sticks, roasted potatoes and okra and that’s indeed what we had. I filmed the fish stick preparation for an upcoming YouTube video. This was a fast and easy meal. You could roast any vegetable or combination of vegetables you like or have on hand. Instead of the fried fish sticks, you could make my super quick salmon. 

Tuesday: Chicken Enchiladas (just the filling) served with corn chips (for my family) and whatever toppings you like – this is my husband’s bowl and he likes sour cream and guacamole. I was planning to make a new version of chicken enchiladas, but then realized I already have several enchilada recipes here so just made the chicken filling recipe in the Instant Pot. I sprinkled some cheese on top and baked it. No one knew, but I put in a TON of mixed greens that were just a little bit past their prime. Yum!

Wednesday: We had leftovers and I forgot to take a picture. My family ate the chicken enchiladas since it made a lot and I made a quick stir-fry of squash, mushrooms and the leftover rice and grilled shrimp my son brought home from work the night before.

Thursday: Waffles, bacon and berry (plus lots of greens) smoothie, as planned. It takes some major convincing to get my gang to try a smoothie. They’re always suspicious of what vegetables I’ve snuck in there. I wonder why??? I kept this one simple with frozen berries, orange juice and a great big bunch of greens. I lied and said it was just spinach, when in fact, it was spinach, kale and chard. What they don’t know won’t hurt them. 🙂  PS. You’ll get the waffle recipe next week.

Friday: Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. I have been feeling very stressed lately and I can certainly tell in my meal selections – lots of comfort food!

My daughter LOVES real mashed potatoes, no cauliflower substitutes. So I make them occasionally just because I’m nice. What I was going for with this meal was good, old-fashioned pan fried chicken, the kind that leaves all the yummy stuff in the skillet that makes really good gravy. The breading on the chicken was a mix of tiger nut flour, arrowroot and cassava. I added a dash of paprika and garlic powder. I dredged each piece of chicken in almond milk and then the flour and fried in a little bit of avocado oil. Really simple and really good.

Saturday: Calabash shrimp, Hushpuppies, Cole Slaw and leftover green beans. The shrimp and hushpuppies were made with all pantry ingredients (except the shrimp themselves which were frozen from Costco), Cole slaw is a super easy veggie side dish made with fresh cabbage, purchased almost three weeks ago. Last week I talked about eating the most perishable produce first. That means, we’re eating a lot of cabbage this week. 🙂 I will add that we’re eating a bit more shrimp and fish lately because the stores have been out of beef, chicken and pork and thankfully, we all enjoy seafood of any kind.

While I was cooking, my sweet tooth came for a visit, so I made up another batch of edible cookie dough. My daughter had made an angel food cake earlier in the day (a gluten free box mix from Aldi), but I don’t tolerate that much refined sugar. This cookie dough is sweetened with a little maple syrup, has a little sugar from the chocolate chips, but otherwise is just almond butter, grass-fed butter, almond flour, walnuts and coconut. It’s really more like a power ball recipe. After I photographed this, I set it down on the table and everyone said they didn’t want any – they wanted cake. But then they said they would just have a little taste. And then the bowl was half empty. Uh huh, it’s good. This is the sort of thing that you could just mix up a single serving if you want. Perhaps I’ll write up the recipe that way, then you can double, triple, quadruple…it if you want to make a family sized batch.

Sunday: Burgers with sautéed mushrooms and onions, oven fried squash with the first crop from my garden, more leftover green beans and I turned the leftover mashed potatoes into potato cakes. Here’s what you do to make the potato cakes: mix your leftover mashed potatoes with an egg yolk and then add a little almond flour and a little arrowroot, salt and pepper, cheese if you like and mix until it’s pretty thick. Then fry the little cakes in a skillet with a little bit of oil – just enough to keep your cakes from sticking. Such a great way to stretch leftovers. I probably had 3/4 of a cup of potatoes, added one egg yolk and 1/2 cup flour.

Here’s what’s on tap for this week:

Monday: scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits with fresh strawberry jam and green smoothie. 

• This entire meal is centered around the hope that we can go strawberry picking. We’re late in the season, but it just slipped my mind with everything else going on – until I realized we were down to our last jar of homemade jam! I’m writing this Monday morning and still waiting to hear back from the farm where I hope to pick as to whether or not they have berries left today.
• If looking for substitutions, I have several different biscuit recipes, you can use whatever jam you like, make a quiche instead of scrambled eggs, have bacon instead of sausage, put anything you want in your smoothie, make your family’s favorite breakfast dish, the options go on and on, but everybody loves breakfast for dinner!

Tuesday: Paleo Gumbo with Rice. Another day, another experiment. 

• I bought a grass-fed smoked sausage on my last Costco trip, so there is a lot of that staring at me every time I open the freezer.
• I purchased one of those pre-packed packages of chicken on my last Whole Foods trip about a month ago and it’s not enough for my family to make a meal all by itself so I decided to combine a link of the sausage, the small pack of chicken, some canned tomatoes, frozen okra and seasonings and make a gumbo. I’ve never made gumbo before so we’ll see how this goes. I am imagining it turning out much like my jambalaya, but we’ll see.
• Regarding the chicken: I usually purchase my meat from the meat counter at Whole Foods. That way, I can get exactly the amount that I know my family needs for a meal. The pre-packed chicken is almost always not enough so I end up using two packs and that’s way too much. I know that leaves leftovers, but I’m trying to be real judicious with food usage so I really just want enough for one meal plus one leftover lunch for my husband. In case this is your situation too, consider buying your meat from the butcher directly rather than choosing from the pre-packed options.

Wednesday: Instant Pot Honey Mustard Chicken with frozen broccoli and rice if there is any leftover from Tuesday

• I made this as an experiment a couple weeks ago and it was really good, so tonight I’ll be filming it for YouTube.
• My son didn’t love it once I told him it had honey in it. I know, he’s weird, so I’ve chosen to make this on a night that he’s working.
• It has a little bit of an Asian flair, so I thought broccoli and rice would go well. I have a couple bags of broccoli in the freezer, but you could substitute any vegetable you like.
• For the rice, you could use any starch you like or cauliflower rice. This would be good with roasted cauliflower as well. If you use cauliflower, you don’t need to have another vegetable on the side. In fact, if you use cauliflower and want a second vegetable, I wouldn’t recommend broccoli because they’re both in the same family so provide similar nutrients. I’d mix it up with something like bell peppers, green beans, or squash.

Thursday: Teriyaki Beef Meatballs and Stir-Fry Vegetables

• The vegetables are a frozen mix. Last time I shopped at a regular grocery store, I was looking for frozen vegetables and my only choices were the stir-fry mix and okra. Thankfully, we like both of those so I picked up several bags of each.
• You could serve rice or cauliflower rice with this meal, but we’ve had that already twice this week, so we’ll just do without.
• The teriyaki beef meatballs will have a similar flavor to my Asian spaghetti or Mongolian Beef so either of those would make a good substitute, but I thought I’d try meatballs for variety.

Friday: Crazy Crust Pizza and whatever vegetable we have left

• I had the nerve to NOT serve pizza last Friday, so I had to put it on the menu for this week or else endure the wrath of my teenagers.
• One YouTube viewer asked if the Crazy Crust recipe would work with almond flour so I told her I’d try it next time, which I intend to do.
• You could choose any one of my pizza recipes as a substitute: paleo pizza crust, sweet potato meatza, paleo pizza bowls or pizza popover.

Saturday: Tuna salad with chips and a vegetable, likely squash

• I’ve picked up canned tuna everywhere I’ve shopped lately. It’s a great shelf-stable protein and also my boys eat it a lot when they’re camping. They take the kind in foil pouches rather than cans so I stock up on both. This is a super easy meal for a busy Saturday. (We’re not really busy now, but we do tend to do a lot of work around the house so I don’t typically feel like making a big elaborate meal on Saturdays.)
• I have lots of squash and zucchini coming on in the garden right now so we’re eating a lot of it. We have the occasional cucumber as well. The spinach is just about gone – it’s gotten too hot. We’ll eat whatever we have.
• A Thrive Market box should arrive mid-week bringing us our favorite avocado oil potato chips and they go really well with tuna salad. PS. If you’re not a Thrive Market member already, I HIGHLY recommend it.

I’m going to stop there for this week. Frankly, it’s a triumph that I have a meal plan for six days. I’ve definitely had a mental block lately. It doesn’t help either that every time I’ve been out of the house in the past couple weeks, I’ve felt like people were not paying attention to the social distancing guidelines. It’s ok with me if you choose to get physically close to other people who choose the same, but I am still being very cautious and like the 6 foot distance we’re supposed to be keeping. We went for a hike yesterday and we passed probably 6 or 7 other groups of people. Only one other got off the trail to give us space. We stepped off the trail for every other group and not one said thank you or even acknowledged us. In fact, at one point, there were two groups who had stopped to talk to each other and, seemingly very begrudgingly, they split so we could walk between them, but were still standing right on the trail so we were just inches from them. I just don’t understand. This is a serious disease, cases are still growing by leaps and bounds and lots of people around us are at very high risk. All that to say, I’m not going out unless I have to. In some ways that makes it easier to plan meals. I only have so much food here so our choices are somewhat limited. I’m trying to be as creative as I can with what we have. I find that if I keep the meals interesting (and, of course, tasting delicious) then everyone is happy and they’re not begging for gluten-containing foods or even much non-paleo stuff.

That’s it from here this week. I hope you go out (or stay in) and make it a good one. Remember to lead with love and understanding. We very rarely know what’s really going on in the lives of the people we encounter on a daily basis so assume the best in everyone.